CHAPTER NINETEEN
Despite the presence of the monarchy in Romania in 1920, its government was weak and impotent in the face of the organized bands of robbers that were wreaking havoc on the country. The rich were constantly watching their backs, expecting to be attacked and robbed at any moment.
Poverty had its advantages. Isaac and Rebecca owned nothing that could possibly be of any value to thieves, and therefore didn’t have much to worry about. During their three-year layover in Kishinev, they resided in a poor housing complex,I but directly across the street lived a wealthy family who owned a beautiful house surrounded by a large gate and a number of ferocious guard dogs. But all the security measures in the world did not provide the family peace of mind. The wealthy family ended up selling the house to others who were not as fortunate to have the protection of guard dogs.
One day, the couple and their daughters watched helplessly as their new neighbors were brutally threatened and robbed by a band of vicious criminals. Under normal circumstances, one would call the police, but there was no police presence or form of control.
The government may have turned a blind eye to the wave of crime that was sweeping the area, but they wasted no time in dragging Isaac and his wife out of their dreary housing project one day and into a dingy-looking courtroom in Kishinev. Their family, like thousands of other Jewish refugees from Ukraine and Russia, was living in the country illegally. The Romanian government had little sympathy for the plight of these people, and their Jewish status didn’t help matters. Jews were a minority in Romania and were disliked by many. Up until seventy-two years earlier, Jews enjoyed few rights in Romania.II
The court gave the couple the equivalent of a lecture; it was essentially a warning to leave their country. Rebecca stood up defiantly in front of the court, throwing her hands into the air and proclaiming to the magistrate, “Believe me, when we’re finally able to go to America, nobody will be more thrilled than us…” It was fortunate that the judge didn’t understand her heavily accented Yiddish.
The humiliation that Channa saw on her mother’s face was something that the young girl had never witnessed before. For the first time since fleeing Stavishche, Rebecca publicly verbalized her disgust over the entire matter and expressed frustration over her family’s predicament. That evening, Channa and Sunny watched their mother break down and cry to their father, “We always had trouble, and we still have it. The way it looks, we’ll always have it. They don’t let us [Jews] live; wherever we go, they knock us. They let us live for a while, and before you know it another one [some type of pogrom] comes along.”
Perhaps the largest blow to the family while living in Kishinev was the implementation of the immigration quota put into effect in America in the spring of 1921, just two months after Barney’s group departed. The new quota system limited the number of immigrants from any given country to only 3 percent of the people from that nation already living in the United States during the Federal Census of 1910.
The total number of immigrants that the United States was allowing into the country in 1922 was 355,825. The quota limits for those from Russia were 34,284 and from Romania 7,419. Massive numbers of hopeful immigrants from the former Russian Empire were stranded in Europe. Many chose instead to sail to Palestine and South America, but others remained in limbo in Kishinev.
Jews in Kishinev in 1920 were grateful recipients of the assistance offered to them by the Jewish Federation and Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS). These relief programs were established after an attack on the Jewish community of Kishinev back in 1903. When a fourteen-year-old Christian boy who had gone ice skating in a nearby town was found murdered by the Dniester River, false rumors of a Jewish blood libel murder circulated around a city that was already beginning to exhibit anti-Semitic sentiment.
In reality, the boy had been stabbed by a family member over an inheritance. However, encouraged by rumors published in Bessarabets, the local newspaper, the common belief was that he had been murdered by Jews. According to rumors, the Jews had drained the boy’s blood by piercing all his main arteries, and used it for ritual purposes, most specifically in the making of Passover matzahs.
Following these unsubstantiated accusations leveled against the Jews, tensions flared in Kishinev. The prosperous Jewish community suffered a vicious pogrom over a three-day period beginning on Easter Sunday. The attacks left forty-nine Jews dead and more than five hundred injured. Hundreds of Jewish homes and businesses were looted and destroyed by bandits, leaving two thousand families penniless.
A young Jewish poet from Odessa, Chaim Nahman Bialik, who years later would become one of Israel’s most famous writers, was sent to Kishinev to report on the massacre.III His haunting poem “The City of Slaughter” drew worldwide attention to the tragedy. His epic work chronicled the bloodbath that left Kishinev’s Jewish community crippled.
As a result of the Easter pogrom of 1903, American Jewry put aside any differences they may have had and became united in their common goal: to help their unfortunate brethren abroad. Knowing that most of the Jews who were stranded in Kishinev in 1920 had endured similar tragedies and pogroms, they reached out to lend a much-needed helping hand. Their assistance with food, clothing, and education, as well as their guidance in completing the paperwork necessary for immigration to the United States, was invaluable.
A Silver Lining
It was thanks to the Jewish Federation that Channa and Sunny were able to attend school in Romania. Unlike many schoolchildren who dread going to school each day, the girls began their days merrily as their father walked them to school. It was the first time that the young sisters felt safe.
One morning, at the makeshift Kishinev school, Jewish delegates arrived in Channa’s classroom as the students were singing Hebrew songs. They asked all the children in the class to walk with them to a large warehouse. The relief workers knew that the families of these children literally owned nothing, and they wanted to help prepare them with a warm wardrobe as winter approached. The warehouse was stacked with gently used garments, and the relief workers outfitted all the students with clothing. A nice female delegate took Channa aside and tried her best to judge her size; she then looked around for clothes that might fit the skinny girl. She found a little coat with a fur collar as well as a pair of shoes and a dress.
When Channa returned home from the warehouse that day, her mother was heartbroken at the sight of her daughter in her new fur-trimmed coat. Rebecca’s pride was so great that despite their desperate financial situation, and Channa’s urgent need of clothing, she refused to be the recipient of charity. So the next day Channa was forced to return the items. The young girl secretly envied the other children who were lucky enough to keep their new clothes.
Channa was allowed, however, to attend camp that summer, which was also sponsored by the Federation; they called it a datcha. She rode a trolley to the outskirts of Kishinev to the day camp, which was near a lake. There were bunks there for the overnight campers, but that waiting list was too long, so she attended during the day, when they put on shows for the children. They had games and toys for the kids to play with and for just a short while, the poor refugees felt like any other carefree children in the world. To Channa, that was heaven on earth.
A Royal Celebration
In 1921, King Ferdinand of Hohenzollern and his wife, Queen Marie, a granddaughter of Queen Victoria and a cousin of the late tsarina Alexandra of Russia, sat on the throne of Romania. Just four years earlier, their eldest son, Prince Carol, had fallen in love with a beautiful Romanian girl named Jeanne “Zizi” Lambrino. She was a Romanian general’s daughter and an indirect descendant of Prince Cuza, a mid-19th-century monarch. While the present king and queen disapproved of their son’s match with a civilian, it is possible that their six or seven million subjects would have accepted the marriage.
In 1917, Prince Carol and Zizi eloped without his parents’ consent. Queen Marie forced her son to annul the marriage. After seeing to it that the couple’s son had no rights to the Romanian throne, Queen Marie then handpicked a “suitable” bride for her impetuous son.
On March 10, 1921, the same day that Barney Stumacher found himself filling out tedious paperwork for an emergency passport at the American consulate in Bucharest, Prince Carol married Princess Helen of Greece, in Athens. She was the pretty daughter of the Greek king Constantine and his wife, Queen Sophie. It was the second union between members of these royal families; the first marriage was between Princess Elizabeth of Romania and Prince George of Greece.
The couple was married in a civil ceremony held in the Grecian palace; an elaborate wedding in the cathedral followed. The procession to the cathedral was led by Carol and his bride in a golden carriage. Princess Helen was wearing a white satin gown trimmed in gold and a veil fit for a queen.
After the ceremony, the royal couple was greeted in Athens by cheering crowds. In Romania, it was hoped by the masses that their prince had finally settled down and was ready to serve his country well. So when he married the Greek princess, the celebration in Kishinev, as in all of the country, was immense, and one that its witnesses would never forget.
For four days and nights, Romania indulged in constant festivities. Right outside Isaac and Rebecca’s housing complex, free food was being passed around liberally, and people were drinking and dancing drunkenly in the streets. Free performances and shows in the theaters were open to anyone who could find a seat. Young children looked on as men passed around wine from large jugs while waiting on lines to enter the theaters.
Of course, there were those who took advantage of the drunkenness of the Romanians and the relaxed nature of the celebrations. While celebrating with neighbors on a street in Kishinev, Channa eyed a few young pickpockets, whose victims were too inebriated to notice. Many homes were robbed and vandalized in the more affluent neighborhoods.
The Gypsies
Most noticeable among the villagers on the streets of Kishinev were the Gypsies.IV Standing in the crowd in their bright, multicolored clothing, they were both distinctive and conspicuous. The Gypsies, an ethnic minority enslaved in the country for centuries, were probably the only group of people disliked as much as the Jews in Romania. Until 1856, most Gypsies in Romania were slaves or serfs, usually for boyar families. Even after they were freed, their financial condition didn’t improve much.V
Traditionally, the Gypsies in Kishinev made their living as artisans or by tinkering, telling fortunes, or playing the fiddle. However, unfounded rumors spread among the locals that they were kidnapping small children and forcing them out on the streets as beggars. Isaac, disturbed and angry at such ignorant claims, sat his young family down to explain that the rumors were groundless. He told his wife and young daughters that there were many in the country who disliked the Gypsies, just as there were many who disliked the Jews, and it was these people who encouraged such horrible rumors. He assured everyone that there was nothing to fear from the Gypsies, just as the Gypsies had nothing to fear from the Jews.
Consequently, as these groundless, vicious rumors spread around town, many didn’t feel safe in the streets. The newly arrived Jews in Kishinev, who were naïve immigrants, didn’t know which stories to believe. So parents tried to be more vigilant and watched their children more closely, but it was difficult keeping track of them. And it became virtually impossible to keep the children close to home when posters announced a traveling circus coming to town.VI All the children in the city begged their parents to see it, and Rebecca and Isaac’s oldest daughter was no exception.
Channa had never experienced going to a circus before and was afraid that her mother wouldn’t let her go. In fact, when she finally mustered the courage to ask permission, Rebecca didn’t even know what a circus was.
One of the older boys from the group, Moshe Ova Denka, invited her to accompany him. He was the son of the tsar’s shoemaker from Tarashcha as well as the younger brother of her uncle Avrum’s wife. On the way to the circus, Moshe admitted that his father had only given him enough money for standing-room-only tickets at the back of the tent to watch the show, but Channa didn’t care. She was so excited to experience the circus for the first time that it didn’t matter to her that she would not have a seat.
That evening, the children never sat down once. From the moment the ringmaster first stepped out onto the floor, Moshe and Channa were captivated; beautiful horses and animals performed tricks in the ring, followed by the entrance of an amazing acrobat, who performed double somersaults on a flying trapeze. On the tightwire, women were dancing and men were juggling. What made Moshe and Channa laugh the most were the theatrical clowns that captured the crowd’s attention. They were thrilled to be at the circus and loved every minute of it.
At the end of the show, instead of walking Channa home, as he had originally agreed to do, Moshe complained that he was tired from standing the entire evening and was too exhausted to go out of his way. Channa understood and agreed to make the return trip by herself, even though Moshe originally promised that he would be by her side on the return walk after dark. She was now left alone to find her way home.
The girl ran as fast as she could, without stopping, until finally reaching the housing complex. In the distance, Channa heard faint sounds of fiddling, but never stopped to look around her. Her father’s calming assurances made her feel safe among the Gypsies, but the young girl was petrified to be alone in an unlit part of the large city in the pitch dark. She never ran so fast in her life.
Sunny loved listening to the band that played in the park across the street from where her family lived. She didn’t realize it until years later, but it was Gypsy music that she loved. When a young man from Kishinev committed suicide by hanging himself from a light, this Gypsy band led the funeral procession on the road outside of the housing complex. None of their neighbors knew the deceased, but they all found themselves caught up walking along with the procession. The Jews whispered among themselves that the deceased was an Italian who had died young. The truth was that the Jewish refugees unknowingly found themselves in the midst of an elaborate Gypsy funeral.
A huge send-off is the rule rather than the exception in Gypsy society, and this funeral was considered to be a traditional one. Channa and Sunny enjoyed the musical performance: the band comprised of a fiddler, a clarinet player, a cellist, and a flutist. Behind them, a wagon pulled the coffin, trailed by hysterical female mourners who wailed loudly and unselfconsciously. It appeared as if these women were professional criers who were paid to perform. The screaming was so loud that even the young girls questioned the sincerity of their dramatic displays of grief. The parade of Gypsies headed toward a cemetery outside of town, with the sobbing of the women growing louder and louder. It was an emotional display; the Jews were perplexed, but no one seemed particularly surprised by it.
Isaac Gets a Kaddish
It was a surprise to the Romanian masses when just seven months after the wedding of Crown Prince Carol and his bride Princess Helen, an heir to the throne was born. The October 25, 1921, arrival of Prince Michael (later Mihai I) provoked much talk among Romanians, as well as a lot of finger counting. However, it was another reason for the masses to celebrate, and celebrate they did.
Prince Carol was not the only one to celebrate the birth of a son during that time. Or chadash al tzion ta’ir. A new light is lit. Seven months later, on May 25, 1922, Isaac’s thirty-second birthday, he celebrated the birth of his first son in Kishinev.VII After fathering three girls, Isaac finally had a boy.
It was of great importance to Isaac to finally have a son. He called the boy “My Kaddish.”VIII Kaddish is the traditional prayer for the dead, and a son was given the honor of repeating Kaddish during the eleven months after the death of his parents and also on their yahrzeit.IX A son, after his thirteenth birthday, could be counted as a part of a minyan. In a sense, a man’s son was in fact his Kaddish, and without one, his name would not carry on and a branch in Israel would end.
Channa and Sunny’s Papa finally had a “Kaddish.” He named his firstborn son Beryl after his own father. Beryl was a big baby, weighing over eleven pounds at birth. Rebecca always bore large babies, but she had a terrible time delivering him. The doctor who attended her performed an episiotomy, but he didn’t suture her up properly. She was so torn from the delivery that years later she would be hospitalized from complications stemming from the birth. She had so much trouble, in fact, that after Beryl, she was unable to have any more children.
Channa was ten and Sunny was six when Beryl was born. He was a beautiful baby and a joy to his family. A large celebration was held in the yard for his brit milah (ritual circumcision). As Abraham had circumcised his son Isaac some four thousand years ago, another Isaac would now ask a mohel to do the same for Beryl on the eighth day of his life. The rabbi repeated the words that God told Abraham in Genesis: “This is my covenant, which you shall keep, between me and you and your offspring after you: Every male among you shall be circumcised… when he is eight days old.”X
The celebration that afternoon in the yard wasn’t fancy, as the family was very poor, yet everyone in the housing complex was invited. There were so few causes for celebration in those days, so many attended the party. As the proud papa told his landslayt that Beryl was his father’s namesake, Rebecca took their oldest daughter aside and said, “I had a dear aunt named Channa, who lived to a very old age; you were named after her.”XI
Channa and Sunny had adopted a cute little dog that was with them in the yard that day. Their neighbor, however, was always complaining about the mutt to the girls’ parents. He was raising pigeons in the next yard and was obsessed with racing them. He disliked the dog because he would start chasing after his pigeons in the middle of his races.
On the day of Beryl’s bris, this man was among the guests in the yard. During the party, Rebecca noticed the dog chewing on something and suddenly saw him darting into the woods. As hard as they searched, the girls never saw their dear pet again. Their mother always swore that this neighbor must have poisoned the dog’s food at some point during the party.
Times were trying for the members of Rebecca’s extended family who remained in Kishinev. Yunkel and Esther Cutler were forced to hire out their twelve-year-old son, Daniel, for manual labor. They were naive to the hardships that their child would face in such a situation. Daniel worked from 5:00 A.M. to midnight in a shop in Kishinev. After midnight each evening, he grabbed a blanket and slept in the shop as mice and rats jumped over him. During the colder months, with no indoor heating, that same blanket froze like a tent over him. Needless to say, Daniel was mature beyond his years.
In 1922, sometime after the birth of their second child, a son, Avrum and Slova Cutler were given the opportunity to sail to Eretz Yisrael with her family, the Ova Denkas. Tired of the endless waiting in Kishinev, they embraced the opportunity to travel to France, where they boarded a ship to the Holy Land.XII
In preparation for the arrival of their passports, those in the group who remained in Kishinev underwent physical examinations that were required before leaving for America. The doctors knew that immigrants would be put through a battery of exams at Ellis Island, and, if they failed, they would not be permitted to enter the country. Naturally, everyone in Channa’s family was examined, and she was the only one to have a problem. When the doctor simulated the Ellis Island eye examination on her, he folded her upper eyelids back over a special instrument that resembled a buttonhook. She was diagnosed with trachoma, an extremely contagious eye disease that prevented many immigrants from realizing their dream in the Goldene Medina. It is a conjunctivitis infection that begins slowly; if the eyelids are severely irritated, the lashes may turn in and rub against the cornea. It is easily passed from child to child, and eventually, if left untreated, can cause blindness later in life.
If an Ellis Island doctor suspected trachoma, he would be forced to mark a “CT” (symbolic of trachoma) or an “E” (which indicated eye problems) across the immigrant’s coat in chalk. On most occasions, the poor souls who bore these letters would find themselves sent back to Europe.
Channa visited a doctor twice a week in Kishinev to remove the white puss from the inside of her eyelids. Eventually, he cured her so that she would be able to pass the exam in America. The day of Channa’s last appointment she had a long wait because the doctor was busy talking to a family that she recognized from her neighborhood. The couple had their little boy with them who clung tightly to his mother’s leg. He was a cute little kid, a mongoloid child.XIII Channa overheard the doctor speaking with the parents about him and saw the distress on their faces after the physician explained that their son’s condition wasn’t going to improve.
Bucharest, July 1923
Finally! After spending over two and a half years in Kishinev, the journey to Bucharest began. It was the last stop where immigrant families waited for their ship to arrive. The Caprove family always remembered Bucharest for the inn that they stayed in that first evening. With their limited funds, it wasn’t the finest motel, but the inn still provided a roof over their heads. The excitement soon wore off, however, when they discovered that the inn was infested with bugs, and Rebecca, a very meticulous housekeeper, was going crazy. They were everywhere. As soon as she set eyes on the bugs, she complained to her husband that she wanted to go to another hotel. Isaac knew just what to say to change her mind: “Are you going to let a couple of bugs chase you out of here?” he teased her.
That evening, just a couple of minutes after settling down in her bed, Channa was the first to feel itchy. She started scratching herself, and soon noticed that she was not the only one in the room suffering from itchiness. Looking up nervously from her bed, she saw hundreds of bugs—on the ceiling, on the floors, in her bed…
“Vanzen!” her mother yelled in Yiddish, referring to the bedbugs. “We’re getting out of this inn, Isaac—tonight!” So in the dark, the family of five—Isaac, Rebecca, Channa, Sunny, and Beryl—wandered through the dimly lit streets of Bucharest in search of another inn. Rebecca did eventually find one.
The next day, Channa woke up early and slipped out of the new establishment without telling her parents. The girl was curious and eager to explore the busy streets of Bucharest. In Kishinev, she had heard the women raving that Bucharest was the “Paris of Romania,” with its magnificent stores and huge display windows.
As a young girl, she wasn’t impressed by the shops, but was completely mesmerized by the beautiful, pale-faced women who modeled the fancy dresses in the display windows. One was smiling, so Channa waved at her, but found it strange that she didn’t wave back. An old man standing behind her broke out in laughter at the sight of a little girl waving at a mannequin. He had no idea what an odd sight it was for her, the daughter of a Russian-born seamstress, to see a mannequin that not only had a head, but whose face appeared so lifelike!
Channa’s exploration of the city continued; she enjoyed the music that was playing during lunch hour at the outdoor cafés. Adults congregated in groups and laughed as they drank. Channa watched with envy.
Another unusual discovery that she made while wandering the streets of Bucharest was how Romanians went about selling things. Beautiful ladies walked down the streets carrying heavy baskets filled with hot corn on their heads. Channa was in complete awe of these women and was amazed that they were able to balance the baskets so steadily without ever dropping them.
Hot water was a novelty. Women walked past her down the street hollering, “Hot water! Hot water!” Doors flew open from every direction—people ran out of stores, inns, and houses to purchase the basins of hot water before they were all sold out.
Despite the glamour and excitement of Bucharest, the family was both happy and relieved, after just a few days, to be leaving the city. The appearance of bugs wherever they turned was proving unbearable.
From Bucharest, they traveled to the port city of Constanta, Romania, which was on the western coast of the Black Sea. Constanta was the site of the ancient city of Tomis, and acquired its current name from the Emperor Constantine I.
In Constanta, the family was held up an extra week because Sunny was sick. Landslayt from Stavishche urged them to go ahead and set sail for America, assuring the young parents that they would bring Sunny with them on the following ship that was scheduled to depart for America. However, Isaac would hear none of this and insisted they wait and travel together as a family. Daniel Cutler, who was once again ill with pneumonia, also delayed his parents’ departure, although they ended up boarding a Greek ship, the SS Byron, which left Constanta four days before the others.
At last, on a beautiful sunny morning, Thursday, August 9, 1923, the family set sail for America on a cargo vessel from the Fabre Line named the SS Braga. Before the voyage, Isaac insisted on buying a color picture postcard of the ship. He wanted to send it to Itzie Stumacher in America, either hoping to impress him or to forewarn him of his impending arrival. However, Itzie already knew that they were coming, and Isaac never did get around to mailing it.